(brief electronic music) - Lawmakers look to change up the new recreational marijuana law before it goes into effect next week.

Youngstown State gets blowback over its decision to hire Republican Congressman, Bill Johnson, as its new president.

And Ohio collects a multimillion dollar settlement over contamination by forever chemicals.

"Ideas" is next.

(dramatic music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas".

I'm Glenn Forbes in from Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio Republican lawmakers are proposing a number of changes to the newly-passed recreational marijuana statute.

That law is set to go into effect next week.

Youngstown State University is getting blowback over its decision to hire Ohio Congressman, Bill Johnson, as its new president.

Akron's Citizen Police Oversight Board will review a police internal investigation that found eight officers who fatally shot Jayland Walker last summer were justified in their actions.

And Ohio will get a settlement from major companies over a five-year-old lawsuit involving forever chemicals contaminating the Ohio River.

Joining me to talk about all of these and other stories, from "Ideastream Public Media" reporter Abigail Bottar and Associate Producer Josh Boose, in Columbus, State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Ohio's new recreational marijuana statute goes into effect next week on December 7th.

Voters approved the legalized use for adults 21 and older when they passed Issue Two last month.

Before it goes into effect, Republican lawmakers are working to tweak the law.

They can make those changes because it is a statute and not an amendment.

Karen, State Rep Gary Click of Vickery has proposed House Bill 341.

There's some home rule type provisions in there that would allow local governments to prohibit the use and cultivation of marijuana or limit it.

It also changes the tax revenue distribution.

What can you tell us?

- Well, I think it's really interesting to look at the component of that that deals with local communities being able to ban marijuana because this kind of goes against what we've seen in state lawmakers' actions in the last couple of, well, really years.

Because they've banned local communities from banning plastic bags, they've banned local communities from banning flavored vapes, which they're now trying to override Governor Mike DeWine's veto of that.

And it's just kind of interesting that they're gonna let local communities ban marijuana in this proposal.

Though, I have to say this proposal and another one from Representative Cindy Abrams from the Cincinnati area, both Click and Abrams are Republicans, they are in the House, whereas the Senate had said that they wanted to be the chamber that started all the changes that could be coming for Issue Two.

So these bills have been proposed, they're out there.

I don't know if they're gonna be able to move or not.

- And what about that tax distribution piece to it?

I mean, it looked like, you know, there was some shuffling around there, different programs this was gonna go to.

What's in that proposal?

- I think there's been a desire to change the way that the tax structure has gone.

When voters approved Issue Two, they approved language that said that about three-quarters of the tax revenue that would be coming from the sale of marijuana would go to either the Social Equity and Jobs Fund that this bill sets up, this law sets up, or they would go to local communities that have dispensaries, and then the rest of the money about 20-some percent, 25% would go to administrative costs and also addiction treatment.

But there's been a desire to really change that around and, in fact, there's a bill or the Chamber of Commerce, rather, had suggested that it should be divided equally among the state and the local government fund, and then also the One Ohio Recovery Foundation, which is the private nonprofit organization that's currently dealing with about half of Ohio's settlement from the national opioid lawsuits.

So there's a real struggle back and forth over who's gonna get the money that this is gonna generate.

And I would expect to see some changes when it comes to tax revenue and where it goes.

- Have we heard from the backers of Issue Two, the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol?

Were they expecting some of these tweaks?

Were they expecting some pushback here?

- Well, they were expecting changes, definitely.

They were expecting, and when I talked to the group, it's called the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, their spokesperson, Tom Haren, he said that, you know, one of the reasons that this was a law on the ballot in November and not a constitutional amendment was because there could be changes, because the marijuana industry's gonna change and he expected some changes from state lawmakers.

Don't know exactly how they're looking at these proposed changes.

And what we're really waiting for is something that will move forward next week.

The law takes effect on Thursday, and a lot of lawmakers, including Governor Mike DeWine, have said they don't want the law to take effect and then for lawmakers to come in and tinker with it because once you put it out there and then you take some things away from it, that that's gonna confuse voters.

It's gonna be frustrating for people who voted for this.

But the Senate spokesperson, John Fortney, Senate Republican spokesperson, John Fortney, told me that there's no plan right now to repeal the law created by Issue Two, there's no plan to pull it all the way back, though there was a video that circulated last night on Twitter or X, or whatever you wanna call it, that supposedly was from a webinar with the Ohio Manufacturers Association that suggested that all of the language could be pulled back.

We're waiting to find out if that's the case, but according to the Senate Republican spokesperson, that's not gonna happen.

The law is gonna go forward, but it's gonna go forward with tweaks and changes.

- Yeah, and Karen, we had heard from Governor DeWine shortly after the election that he wanted some provisions in there, kind of limiting the use of marijuana in public, trying to shield kids from that smoke, but also, you know, the advertising, I guess around edibles or things of that nature.

Are those things likely to happen?

What's the latest there?

- Oh, I think there's some real concern about the use of marijuana in public.

And in fact, the Chamber of Commerce in its letter to state lawmakers asking for certain changes, specifically said that Ohio should do what Colorado has done and ban the use of marijuana in all public places, indoor and outdoor, which would, in some ways, deal with the problem of smoke and being able to smell it and that kind of stuff, which DeWine talked about.

But they also, the Chamber wanted to see some changes with the tax structure and also wanted to see some employer protection laws beefed up so that employers who want to do more testing or put in more rules to ensure a drug-free workplace would be able to do so.

And I know that the folks who had backed this proposal had said they had no problem with that, that nothing in Issue Two changed the law when it came to employers.

So I think that the real timeline question here is what's out there, though.

I mean, the law takes effect on Thursday, like I said, and so lawmakers have a lot of work to do in less than a week to try to make changes if they wanna do that.

- Well, that is certainly the case, and of course, it never ends with the election.

It's the aftermath and it's how it is implemented and all those things.

We'll continue to keep an eye on that, Karen.

- And also- - [Glenn] Yeah, go ahead.

- One other thing I wanna add here that, you know, yeah, the law does take effect on Thursday, but it will take a while to set up the system of regulations of recreational marijuana.

And I think that one of the major concerns here with all these changes is how would any of this affect home grow, which is what a lot of people had wanted to see outta this.

And will there be efforts to try to ban home grow?

And certainly when you look at some of the proposals or listen to people talk about the proposals about THC content, that could potentially affect the home grow aspect of Issue Two.

So all of this is stuff that we're watching.

(brief tense music) - On Tuesday, Akron police released the findings of its own report into the death of Jayland Walker, who was shot and killed by officers following a car and subsequent foot chase in June of last year.

Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett wrote that while there were some instances where some of the officers did not follow department procedure, the officers were justified in their actions.

Abigail Bottar, what were these procedures that the officers did not follow throughout this chase?

- There were a few things that people had criticized from the police response that Mylett addressed in his executive summary of the internal investigation.

One was that an officer had added an extension to his department issued magazine that increased capacity to up to six additional rounds.

Mylett addressed this saying that the officer thought this action was permissible, and Mylett said that the investigation found that there was a lack of clear language in the department policies about this.

It's also important to note that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation report found that this added capacity had no outcome on the shooting, had no impact on the outcome of the shooting.

Another thing Mylett addressed was two potential violations during the car chase that proceeded the shooting.

Two cruisers entered the chase without specific authorization from a supervisor, and two officers didn't activate their body cameras.

Mylett wrote that these officers didn't intentionally violate any policy.

And the last issue he addressed was that an officer had used his cruiser to close the driver's side door of Walker's vehicle to stop him from exiting, which Mylett said was reasonable given the circumstances of the case.

- Now, there hasn't been much further comment or any further comment really, from the police because of pending litigation.

What has some of the other reaction been either from city leaders?

I know Congresswoman Emilia Sykes had a statement.

What has some of the reaction been to this report, this internal investigation?

- So we heard from Mayor Dan Horrigan, who put out a statement saying that he supports Mylett's assessment of the case.

And we did hear from Representative Emilia Strong Sykes.

Her district covers all of Akron.

And she has been pushing for the United States Department of Justice to investigate the patterns and practices of the Akron Police Department.

So she said she's going to continue to do that and continue to talk, have conversations to talk about policing in the community to kind of gain trust back.

Bobby DiCello, he's the Walker family's lawyer who's pressing this suit against the city and the police department, he released a statement talking about the importance of the lawsuit now against the police department to bring justice for Walker.

And then the other thing that we saw this week was the city's Citizens Police Oversight Board, which came to fruition after Walker's death.

The board announced that it will review the internal investigation the department did.

- And this, of course, I mean, it was a significant moment, really, for this region and it was a national story, but also it was a significant moment for community police relations in Akron.

The city's going to be getting a new mayor, Shammas Malik and Chief Mylett previously announced he's going to leave this job at the end of the year.

He served a little more than two years here in Akron.

It wasn't that long ago when we were doing stories about his hiring.

So what do you think, I mean, obviously the challenges for Shammas Malik are significant and this is also a time of transition for the police department.

- Yeah, I mean, I think this is going to be a lot and people in Akron are both encouraged by Malik becoming mayor.

He ran on platforms of public safety and talking about changes to the police department.

So there's hope that he could bring some real change to the city and this mistrust in police and this bad relationship that the community has with the police.

But others are really skeptical.

And I think that this process that he'll be going through right when he enters office to hire a new police chief will really be a test of how people view his administration and the way that he works to, I mean, as he says, fix the relationship between the police and the community.

But either way, he's promised some changes to the police department in terms of community policing, changes to policy.

So, you know, we'll be following that very closely to see what he does and what kind of impact that has on the community.

(brief tense music) - Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says last week's shooting on Public Square that injured two people speaks to the need for parents to step up.

The shooting erupted after the holiday lighting last week.

Both the suspects and victims are underage.

Josh, this was part of Mayor Bibb's sit down with "Ideastream" reporters yesterday when he commented on this.

We're gonna have continuing coverage of the Q & A session here on WKSU and online at Ideastream.org.

Josh, you've been going through the interview.

- [Josh] Yeah.

- Just his reaction to this shooting at a really what's a prominent downtown event.

- Yeah, and I think it was a little surprising too, because he came right out and said, look, the government could not prevent what happened last weekend.

There was a large group of kids, they were fighting.

Police went in, they did their job, they tried to get that fight to stop, but someone pulled out a gun.

So the mayor says, two things are at play here.

The first thing, we have an illegal gun problem in the city.

He says more than likely that gun that was used at Public Square was illegal.

And number two, he says, parents need to step in.

They need to take more responsibility for their kids.

They need to know where their kids are, who their kids are with and what they are doing.

And, you know, there's just not a lot of simple answers when addressing this.

I think a lot of people wanna say we need more police, that will fix it.

The problem is there's such a push to bring more people downtown right now, it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

- Yeah, and it's interesting because there was legislation regarding curfew where the parents would, can be prosecuted, I suppose, for these curfew violations.

I mean, did he have any, did he suggest kind of what the next step is to find these parents, hold them accountable?

Because, you know, in a way he's right.

I mean, these are teenagers in some cases.

They're not yet adults.

But you go along the problem of how, how do we address this?

- And he didn't get specific when talking about that.

And I think a part of that strategy, at least politically, was take the pressure off of the administration a little bit, take the pressure off of police because they have been working so hard since this summer going into, well, the holiday season right now, to clean up the streets, really, with illegal guns, getting illegal guns off the streets and getting felons off the streets, as well.

So no specific plans, but he's saying, hey parents, we need your help, in order to do this.

In order to clean up Cleveland and get the violence down, you need to step up.

- And certainly over the summer we saw state intervention, federal intervention with the State Highway Patrol and the US Marshal was trying to help out with some of the crime issues because there's a police shortfall.

I know at least some on council are saying, hey, this needs to continue.

We need to bring the state troopers back.

But speaking of the staffing issues with the police, Mayor Bibb and the police union have done a lot to, I mean, we've seen significant pay increases agreed to higher pay for cadets, fast tracking for some of the cadets.

Obviously, that's gonna take some time to come to fruition, but that's kind of how he's tried to manage this police shortfall.

- And they say it's been successful or it's starting to be successful so far.

I mean, they are doing everything they can, Glenn, to recruit people: higher wages, there's sign-on bonuses, their schedules.

The police officer's schedules have completely changed so they're not constantly filling in for each other.

They've restructured it with the police union.

And so until we get to that point, and the mayor, Justin Bibb said yesterday when he sat down with us that there is 300 openings right now in the police department.

They're down 300 still, so there's a lot of work to be done until we get to that point, Cuyahoga County Sheriff and the Ohio State Highway Patrol will be helping.

(brief tense music) - Youngstown State University still getting blowback after it selected United States Representative Bill Johnson as its new president.

Josh, some of the university's biggest donors are threatening to pull support over Johnson's hiring, we just heard recently.

Ideastream Public Media's Conor Morris talked to Ed O'Neill of "Married with Children" fame, "Modern Family" fame, four touchdowns in one game at Polk High.

Sorry, that's just a "Married with Children" reference.

But to be serious, Ed O'Neill not happy about this.

He's threatening to pull support.

- Yeah, Conor came up to us yesterday in the newsroom, said, I just talked to Ed O'Neill.

That Ed O'Neill?

Yes, he played football at Youngstown.

He said he got a doctorate from YSU, an honorary degree, this is Ed O'Neill.

He says he's gonna give it back.

He doesn't want it.

He's gonna start calling YSU Trump U.

And he says, a lot of people are going to feel that way.

He was really fired up, he's not the only one either.

The chairman of the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees resigned.

And then a major donor, Bruce Zoldan, he owns Phantom Fireworks, he recently gave about 5 million bucks to the university to fund a new student center.

He's saying, okay, you gotta rescind the hiring of Johnson, or I'm going to stop giving money.

And I don't, by the way, I don't want my name on the new student center building.

So a lot of pushback here.

- Yeah, it's amazing.

We were talking a little bit about this yesterday and you pointed out to me that it's not kind of politics the way that it used to be.

And you attribute it to the 2020 election.

And it's like you're either one side or the other on that one, and there isn't a lot of middle ground.

There is not a lot of moderation when it comes to this issue.

And I think we're seeing that with this kind of, I dunno, groundswell or whatever you wanna call it.

- Bruce Zoldan even went as far as to say, look, we do not want anyone political in this role.

Is everybody political?

Yes, they have their own thoughts, they have their, you know, what they believe, their values.

But I feel it's at a different level now because it's so amplified and it's so far away from each other, maybe the most that it's ever been.

So yeah, it's a different time, Glenn, and people are not, the students in particular are not putting up with it, they want better.

- Yeah, I was just gonna ask you about the students.

We've seen a lot of student demonstrations tied to Israel and Hamas and things like that.

And so, you know, what has kind of their reaction been?

Has there been any sort of, you know, organized movement there?

Or are they just kind of voicing their displeasure?

- Voicing their displeasure and I think too, I mean, the big issue here is this selective hiring process.

That's what they're saying.

That's what a lot of the detractors are saying right now.

The university board of trustees met recently when they made the official announcement for the new president.

Students and YSU supporters, they wanted to speak.

They kept saying, please let us speak.

Before you go into executive session, we wanna have our say about this and they were turned away.

They weren't allowed to speak.

The board says they interviewed candidates behind closed doors.

They did not want to release the names because of, they didn't wanna scare off any potential high quality candidates.

But others are saying we haven't heard any other names that came in besides this.

(brief tense music) - Ohio will receive $110 million as part of a settlement with three chemical companies over so-called forever chemicals and decades of contamination in southeast Ohio.

The state sued the companies including DuPont over PFAS or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Josh, DeWine followed, filed, rather, this lawsuit in 2018 when he was Attorney General.

So, of course, I'm sure he's somewhat pleased with the settlement.

He says it was the best outcome for the state.

- Yeah, and they were asked too, both the governor and Attorney General Dave Yost were asked, wait a second, couldn't you have gotten more money from this?

Why did you go ahead and settle here?

And both of them, Dave Yost says, look, the payment will be made actually in a lump sum within a month.

Yes, they may have been awarded more money in a jury trial, but they might not have seen that money altogether if DuPont would've filed bankruptcy protection, something like that.

And that's what's happened to a lot of the opioid cases.

So that is something that they say, look, we're gonna get the money in a month, we're gonna put it in these accounts, and we're gonna get right to work where a lot of people with the opioid lawsuits are not gonna see any of the money or a fraction thereof.

- So this contamination, Josh, it's tied to DuPont site along the Ohio-West Virginia border.

They made their Teflon coated products.

What do we know about the health ramifications at this time?

- So there's not a lot that we do know right now.

At high levels, the governor says there's different types of cancers that have been linked to these forever chemicals, but we don't know the full health ramifications.

Dave Yost, the Attorney General, came right out and said, look, this story is not over.

This settlement does not mean that we are done with this because, and this will likely play out for years to come because so much is unknown.

So will they continue to do testing?

Yes.

Will they continue to do monitoring of the water?

Yes, but there's a lot of unanswered questions still to how this will play out.

- And still somewhat unanswered, although we may have somewhat of an idea how the money will be used in Ohio.

What do we know about that?

- Very clear, actually, they have a strategy where about 80% of it is going to go to southeast Ohio, where this happened for water filters, even a new water source, if needed, and they'll do some monitoring as well.

And then the rest of that will be done as part of this environmental helping in the state, testing in the state.

So a big chunk of that going down though, to where this originated in southeast Ohio.

- We're gonna be hearing a lot more about PFAS.

In fact, there are some other lawsuits as well.

One this week was thrown out by an appeals court filed by a firefighter that could have impacted millions of Ohioans.

What do we know about that?

- Well, the judge, the judges I should say, came out and said, look, we cannot connect the firefighter to the foam of the fire that he used to these PFAS.

There was no connection.

So if this firefighter had exposure to large amounts of these forever chemicals, as they're called, how will others link to that?

I mean, the issue is, if this firefighter is having issues and is around this in large quantities, if someone who is just, you know, not getting it as a large enough quantity, then, you know, the story's not over, but there's going to be very unlikely that they will be able to proceed in court with something like this.

- And, of course, the story not over here at "Ideastream" either.

We're gonna have a lot of reporting coming up on PFAS in 2024 and what these forever chemicals are found in and what the potential effects could be.

So stay tuned here to WKSU and online Ideastream.org.

(brief tense music) Governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted have received a subpoena as part of a First Energy Investors lawsuit connected to the $60 million bribery scheme that brought down former House Speaker Larry Householder.

DeWine being asked to provide communication he might have had with First Energy Executives and former Public Utilities Commissioner of Ohio Chair Sam Randazzo.

- Yeah, and I think the Governor's office says that this is a subpoena for documents and not really a surprise.

The governor himself said that he will be complying.

Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted will be asked to give a deposition, which is a sworn statement, a sworn interview essentially in regard to this lawsuit, sometime in late February, early March of next year.

This is the lawsuit that investors at First Energy filed over the case.

It's not a criminal lawsuit, it's a civil lawsuit, but, of course, it's connected to the criminal lawsuit, which had Larry Householder, the former Ohio House Speaker going to prison for 20 years, that's where he is now, and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges in prison for five years.

So all of this has created, one thing that's important to remember, a lot of the elements of House Bill 6 the law that all this is centered around are still in place.

While the bailout of the nuclear power plants did get eliminated, there are other things that are still in place with related to that law.

(brief tense music) - Monday on the "Sound of Ideas" on 89.7 WKSU, how do you feel about tipping?

New technology has made tipping more prevalent than ever, leading to confusion and even complaints, especially on social media.

We'll discuss tipping with experts and we encourage you to weigh in via email or by calling the show.

I'm Glenn Forbes in from Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching and stay safe.

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